Ain't I A Scholar Stamped at Risk from Birth: An Urban Black Scholar's Story

Ain’t I A Scholar-Stamped at Risk from Birth: An Urban Black Scholar's Story, interrogates the historical and contemporary education of myself as an Urban Black Scholar (UBS) in the United States. Framed within Critical Black Pedagogy and grounded in Auto-Afrography, this study explores how systemic racism, poverty, and exclusionary educational practices have marked Black children as "at-risk" from the moment of birth. These institutionalized labels, often rooted in racialized deficit thinking, serve to pathologize Black identity, disqualify cultural ways of knowing, and uphold educational structures that push students to the margins.Through a self-reflection narrative inquiry, this book amplifies the lived experiences of a UBS who has persisted through K–12 schooling and into higher education, despite being systematically pushed towards the margins. Drawing from community-based educational programs and my own journey, I reveal how educational resilience is cultivated through cultural consciousness, communal care, and self-definition. Rather than accepting the label of "at-risk," I reframe my identity as a scholar, visionary, and change agent.Ultimately, this book offers a liberatory blueprint for educational leadership by centering Urban voices, disrupting deficit narratives, and demanding pedagogical models. It insists that Black students are not at-risk by nature, they are at-promise by legacy. Read more